SK Telecom T1 AD Carry Bae “Bang” Jun-sik was honest and blunt in describing SKT’s losing streak in the middle of the League Champions Korea summer split.
After SKT’s final regular season match Sunday, Bang said in a video interview with Fomos he didn’t have any specific moments that were disappointing, but he instead reflected on the team’s mid-split struggles as a whole.
“I don’t really have particularly large regrets,” he said. “We lost because our opponents worked harder, and though we also could have worked harder to do better, I think it was a time when it was hard for us to realize that.”
Surprisingly enough, it seemed like Bang wasn’t emotionally hung-up on the losing streak. Although it must have taken its toll at the time, Bang had an incredibly logical thought process when looking back at the situation. He offered a complete recollection of the entire year so far.
“At the beginning of the summer split, we played right after the Mid-Season Invitational, so when we lost to Samsung, we thought that we were having a rough time adjusting to the new meta,” he said. “We did end up winning the rest of the matches for Round 1, but for Round 2 after Rift Rivals, we didn’t think we had a particularly lesser understanding of the meta at the time. But a lack of understanding of the meta and the many mistakes made during matches led to the large losing streak. Honestly, before (the losing streak) we never went into a game thinking we would lose. Even in the middle of the streak, we would go in really wanting to win, but we kept losing. Since then, the team just didn’t think about rankings.”
SKT will open the LCK playoffs this weekend after finishing in fourth place, and Sunday’s match didn’t mean much with SKT’s status already confirmed. But the win wasn’t particularly clean, as SKT lost Game 1 and had two comeback wins to pull out the series. Bang was asked to rate his performance during the summer split, and he shared a rather interesting metric for professional success.
“If I would score myself out of a 5, I would give myself a 4.5,” he said. “As a pro, I don’t think that’s a good rating. A professional should always be 10 out of 10. I think it’s a bad rating personally.” When asked what he would give his support Lee “Wolf” Jae-wan, Bang smiled and said he would give Wolf the same score, since “the bottom lane is one body.”
Cover photo courtesy of Riot Games